Tagged: fruit salad

September 14, 2015

Tropical End of Summer Watermelon

For the end of the summer, some good friends threw a potluck pool party. I’m a potluck one-trick-pony by this point and decided to take advantage of the possibly last of the good watermelons of the summer. I wanted something slightly summer themed and found a great image of a pineapple parrot on the web. A MUST DO! So here it is, an end-of-summer, tropical themed fruit plate.

First, an up-close of my favorite part, the parrot!

As you can see, it’s made from the top of a pineapple. This is how I did it:

Cut the top of the pineapple off the body. I cut about 4 inches down to be conservative in allowing myself enough room to make a head.
Carve away the pineapple into a dome. Remember, this is the parrot’s head, so I made it slightly oblong so that it flowed into the beak.
Using kitchen shears, cut off all the leaves closest to the head. Try to cut some long because we will be using those later for the wings.
Carve a small carrot into a beak-like shape. I used a curved carving knife. Remember that parrots have hooked beaks so try to make sure you curve the beak. I also added a bottom beak from a small piece of carrot.
Attach the carrot with a half of a toothpick (or if you have 2 pieces, two halves of a toothpick). I put the pointy part into the carrot and the blunt part into the watermelon.
Place the long pieces of the cut leaves in the position of wings. I cut them so there was a small, medium, and long one. To place them I simply tucked them in between the cut pieces.
I was going to use blueberries originally for the eyes, but they were huge. I used candy eyes. I made a little cuts into the pineapple for eye sockets. Careful if you use candy; they don’t do well in wet places (the black middle could run) so be careful when you place them. They held up throughout the party though, until my kiddos ate them 😉
Place the parrot on the watermelon bowl with two toothpicks.

Here is the fruit salad with bowl; I used watermelon (balled), strawberries, red grapes, and green grapes. I used soem of the green grapes too, to look like leaves around the watermelon bowl.

For this fruit salad I used:

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June 19, 2015

Dolphins and Waves Fruit Bowl

Ahhh watermelon season is back. And this particular one was delicious! For a picnic in the park, I brought this fruity dish… a watermelon ocean and banana dolphins. All it had in it was green grapes, strawberries, watermelon, and of course, bananas. The banana dolphin idea is certainly not mine as it has spread over the internet like wildfire, but I’ve always wanted to try to do it because it was such a brilliant thought that I wish I could give credit to the originator (but I have no idea who that person is). Anyhow, the kiddos loved them and I thought they were particularly cute — it helps too that it was delish 🙂

For this watermelon, I didn’t use anything in particular besides some carving and regular kitchen knives. I did add the black sprinkle for the eyes, though, since they looked much more uniform than carving the eyes.

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May 7, 2015

A Gradient of Fruity Flowers

With this being Teacher Appreciation week, as always I was stumped as to what to get for the teachers. I really like gift cards generally but sometimes I feel like it feels like a last-minute gift. So I wanted to show my thanks to our preschool teachers by making them an edible flower arrangement. You probably all heard me complain about how much edible arrangements cost, so I took it into my own hands and came up with a bouquet of watermelons, cantaloupes, and pineapple with blueberry metals and green grapes stems. Super simple as always, just by using an inexpensive glass vase, one cookie cutter, and some wooden skewers. The twist this time was that I added the melons so that the arrangement was a gradient of colors for a pretty burst of colors. To create the base of the flowers in the vase, I added blueberries to the bottom and grapes on top of those. The fluted neck of the vase held the flowers in place beautifully.
To finish the gift, I added a hand-lettered card not pictured here. I really hope the teachers like the treat!

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October 14, 2014

A Witchy Watermelon

A fun kid’s Halloween party potluck inspired a full-on search for a non-scary watermelon carving for inspiration. I found one design of a witch throwing up fruit salad and it was a fun nod to a puking pumpkin designs I’ve seen, so I did my little spin on it. This time of the year, I can never find large watermelon. Costco, instead, had two little soccer-ball sized ones. I had to improvise a bit with the design by using a cupcake stand to lift up the watermelon from the rest of the fruit salad (so she didn’t get buried) and I had to use a witch hat headband instead of a regular witch hat.

Last week was absolute murder as far as time, so she isn’t as detailed as I would like. I’m going to try this one again, I think.

How I made this watermelon: She was super quick!

First, I made her sit flat by slicing off a piece of the bottom. I also angled that cut a bit so she would look like her head was a tad bit tilted toward the salad.
I cut out a hole for the mouth. I scooped out the watermelon through both openings. I usually use a watermelon baller for nice watermelon presentation but she’s supposed to be throwing up, right? So chunks 🙂 I actually used both watermelons as one was not enough.
I carved some eye whites (sclera) and split a large grape in two and made them the eyes. The pupils were just a tiny bit of edible dough I have and the highlights on the eyes were ghost sprinkles. The eyes are attached with toothpicks.
The nose was half of the slice I took off the bottom. I stuck it on with a toothpick.
Carved the eyebrows and tinted them a bit with brown edible marker so we can see it easier.
I put a mini witch hat fascinator on her because an adult’s witch hat was waaaay too big. I made this one myself, but there are tons of them for sale now-a-days.

Today I used:

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